Keep On Keeping On.

This is my first Five-minute-Friday link-up. Several blogs I follow: Velvet Ashes, a community for women serving overseas, and Lisa-Jo (now at Kate Motaung’s blog) have a Five-minute-Friday link-up party. They post a word, and encourage people to blog about those words for five minutes. No editing. Just writing. And then share your story with others by linking up. When I saw the words for today: “thrive” and “keep” I thought… okay… I’ll take a whack at it. So here it goes:

So it was another night when the world was tumbling down around my ears, and the brokenness and darkness seemed like just too much.

Brokenness, brokenness everywhere you looked.

Kids with shattered lives, orphans who never quite feel home even when they’re taken home, friends plunging down dark paths towards decay, other friends struggling to keep their heads above the water, people who don’t want to choose life, they just want to choose comfort. Banging my head against a brick wall of calcified doctrines with no soul. Wondering if my soul’s going to become calcified as well.

One of those nights where I couldn’t say what exactly was wrong with me, just that EVERYTHING is wrong with the world.

And it’s that most bitter pill I have to swallow, once again, this idea that the very church that’s supposed to be bringing life and hope often ends up screwing things up even more. And I feel like saying, “Where’s the hope? Where’s the healing? God, why aren’t you fixing things? And how can you even begin to fix these things when everything is so far gone?”

And so I lie in bed, with the darkness tumbling down around my ears while my husband whispers prayers, and then I hear You whisper:

Resurrection.

Just that one word. It’s like a small, smooth pebble that I can grasp as the world rushes down past me, crashing in slow motion.

Resurrection.

 Do I believe in the God who raises the dead? Do I believe in his power to raise the dead in me, the dead in others, the dead world? I often think of redemption- of the pain-staking process of piecing together what was broken. I scrounge around peering for its signs all around, and lately I’ve been coming up disappointed.

But resurrection. That’s a bigger word. The thing’s got to be dead before it can be resurrected.

Redemption is me and Jesus and one foot in front of each other, keeping on keeping on. Plodding upward, broken bits being restored.

Resurrection is the whole thing suddenly engulfed in Life. Real thriving. Real flourishing.

So I’m going to keep that word, resurrection. I’m going to hang onto that pebble. I’m not thriving yet, but there is the promise: right when I expect to die, when I’m crushed and overwhelmed beyond the ability to endure it, when I stop relying on myself for anything, my toes are able to touch down on something solid—the God who raises the dead.

  PS: Thanks friends, for sponsoring our mile-swim to raise money to send kids from the community of Sweetwaters on camp! We swim our mile tomorrow, and so far we’ve raised enough to bring 5 kids on camp with us. It has been super, super encouraging seeing so many different people give whatever they can towards this goal. THANK YOU! If you still want to give, visit our pure charity page here!